Do not manually add emails that you got off business cards you collected at a conference. While you may think that they would appreciate your newsletter, sending emails to them violates the CAN-SPAM Act, a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, which gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

* Don’t allow your internet protocol address, IP, to be used for spam

Even if you never send spam yourself, your emails could get flagged as spam if your IP address was used by someone else for spam. You should stick to a reputable email service provider.

*Make sure your subscribers remember you

Another most common reason that emails never reach the inbox affecting 21 per cent of emails is spam complaints.

Every time a subscriber reports an email as spam–even if it isn’t really spam–this complaint gets recorded by the mailbox provider.

Once the complaints exceed a certain threshold, all future campaigns skip the inbox and get sent directly to the spam folder.

To prevent this from happening, make sure that the branding in your emails is memorable, and matches the branding on your website.

This includes any images, colours, typography and voice.

If your subscribers don’t immediately remember who you are, you could get spam complaints, so keep that in mind.

Also, make sure to include an easily accessible “unsubscribe” link so that they can opt out if they no longer want your emails.

*Avoid low mailbox usage

Statistics show that 19 per cent of issues affecting emails is low mailbox usage.

From records, mailbox providers look at the ratio of active to inactive email accounts on your list.

An inactive email account is an account that hasn’t been used in a long time, or is very rarely ever used.

If you are mailing to a large number of addresses that appear to be nearing abandonment, that is a red flag to spam filters.

To prevent this, “clean” your email list periodically of any subscribers who haven’t engaged with your campaigns in a while.

*Don’t allow your subject line to be misleading

As the CAN-SPAM Act states, it is actually against the law to intentionally mislead someone with your subject line in order to induce them to view the message.

In a survey conducted by Litmus and Fluent, over 50 per cent of participants stated that they felt cheated, tricked or deceived into opening a promotional email by that email’s subject line.

*Always include an “Unsubscribe” link

No matter how valuable you think your email campaigns are, you still need to give your subscribers a potential out. If you don’t, you could get spam complaints

*Don’t use spam trigger words

Some spam filters are triggered by certain words in the subject line or the body of the email. Some spam trigger words include: amazing, Congratulations, cancel at any time, dear friend, guarantee, increase.

Your email provider may have a built-in tool that checks your emails for spam trigger words before sending it.